Look out, George Will. Watch your back, Charles Krauthammer. There’s a new conservative columnist in town: former Major League Baseball pitcher John Rocker.

Rocker, who last pitched in the majors in 2003, was known more for his talk off the field than his pitches on it, so perhaps his new gig writing for the conservative website WND.com should come as no surprise.

But before you pigeonhole Rocker as a doctrinaire conservative, consider what he told POLITICO about two hot-button social issues.

On gay marriage: “Am I someone that thinks that I have the right to sit back and judge someone that I don’t know, will never meet, on how they should live their life or what rights they can have to live their life the way they want to? I don’t think I deserve that responsibility.”

On abortion: “Obviously, conservatives would look at me cross-eyed and argue vehemently with me, but I just don’t think one man can tell another man how they can live their life within the confines of moral decisions.”

Rocker said he’s long been interested in politics. “I thought I was going to major in political science” in college, he said, and he views his new column as a way to opine “off the cuff.” He cites Michael Savage, Neal Boortz and Bernard Goldberg as three of his favorite conservative talkers and said he watches Fox News and Fox Business “all day and every day.” He even had nice things to say about Bill O’Reilly — “He has some pretty good insights” — despite having been grilled as a guest on O’Reilly’s program, which “wasn’t a pleasant experience.”

He also knows how to court controversy. In 1999, as a brash, young pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, he was asked by Sports Illustrated if he’d ever play for a New York baseball team.

“I would retire first,” he said. “It’s the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut, next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.”

In that interview, he also complained about the “foreigners” in New York, saying, “You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”

MLB ordered Rocker to attend sensitivity training. He made headlines again in 2002 as a reliever for the Texas Rangers for reportedly yelling homophobic slurs at a restaurant in a gay-friendly neighborhood in Dallas. Meanwhile, his on-field performance was slipping, and that year was his last full season in the big leagues.

Rocker says his former colleagues aren’t too interested in his new occupation.

“They’re not nearly as concerned or as involved in politics as I am,” he said. “We get together and play golf every few weeks, and most of the conversations are just superficial conversations that don’t delve into political topics or debates.”

As Rocker sets his sights on the November election, he said, “Romney stands a pretty good chance” if the economy remains the focus.

“I do agree with Romney on his fiscal track record,” he said. “I do agree with Romney from his experience and knowledge where it is concerned with the private sector and job creation.” But on “social issues, his foreign policy issues, I think the verdict and the jury is still out on that.”

Obama will likely win, Rocker said, “if Democrats can bring the social agenda into things — immigration, the social agenda of health care, trying to help out the lower tier of our population and putting more people on the government tip.”

Rocker hasn’t outright knocked Obama, saying he sympathizes with a guy who has “the toughest job in the world.”

“The nation we live in has not come to the prestige it has based on socialist ideology, from people looking to the government, looking for some kind of help, whether it be health care or social programs like welfare,” he said. “Those ideals are not what created America into the country we are today. It’s been an ideology of capitalism, of, ‘I wake up every morning and put my boots on and make something of myself and my life,’ and I just don’t think President Obama shares those ideals. I think he really wants to steer us more toward a socialist state where a lot of people depend on the government for everything under the sun.”

Rocker does feel fondly about one politician from his home state of Georgia: Newt Gingrich.

“The former speaker is probably one of the brightest men — if not the brightest man — I ever heard speak,” he said. “The guy can spin a sentence and is just a walking encyclopedia and impresses me a great deal with the knowledge he possesses.”

But, he added, “most presidents are handsome men, are charming, have a nice smile. … I think Gingrich would have been tremendous, just not quite as charismatic as he would need to be to pull it off.”